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While global warming since the last ice age has been never been disputed, the association of the gigatons of carbon-dioxide expelled into the atmosphere being problematic has been the focus of serious debate. One of the fundamental problems is that all life on this little rock is symbiotically related and based on carbon. How a animal waste molecule and plant food molecule can cause the end of the world as we know it is difficult to reconcile. Since 2005, the World’s Academies of Science have parroted the each of the other country academies on the issue that greenhouse gases were causing a worldwide disruption of temperature, until just recently.

The mostly ignored in the west, Russian Academy of Science has broken from the politics and advocacy with a bold proclamation:

“Global Warming Ended”

“Global warming ends: in the years to come the temperature drop across the planet, although its nature and will be sparing. So the forecast today with a shared corr. Tass, scientists from the Physics Institute of Russian Academy of Sciences / LPI /.

Moreover, according to research conducted by employees of Dolgoprudny Research Station of the Institute together with colleagues from Central and Upper-Air Observatory Hydromet Institute of Nuclear Physics, Moscow State University, the process of global cooling has begun. After a peak in 2005, the year is now the average temperature on Earth has decreased by 0.3 degrees and returned to the level of 1996-1997-second period. By the year 2015, scientists believe, it will fall a further one and a half tenths of a degree, which corresponds to the climate of the early 80-ies. The year 2020 has already make the inhabitants of northern latitudes to remember the harsh winters of 1978 and 1979, years, and in 2040 th year of the planet will begin to “freeze.” However, only a relatively high temperature mark for the period from 1880 to 2006-th year. Then we can expect a decrease of temperature of 0.5 degrees Celsius compared with the current measure of “global thermometer”.

As revealed in the course of studies, the cause of such climate change is not related to the activities of human civilization in general is … space. The fact that the Earth’s atmosphere is constantly get cosmic dust particles, the scientists explained. According to various observations, the amount of precipitated dust varies from 400 to 1000 tons per day.

In turn, the dust particles are effective condensation nuclei of water vapor. Thus, the more dust enters the earth, the greater the cloud cover of the planet, the more it reflects into space flux of solar radiation. Consequently, the climate becomes colder. It turned out that the warming and cooling periods coincide with periods when our planet is “rolled up” in a particularly dense cloud of interplanetary “dirt.”

“The main supplier of this dust – comets – told of the party, Chief Scientific Officer Lebedev Physical Institute, Doctor of Physical Mathematical Sciences Yuriy Stozhkov. – When approaching the Sun at a distance of less than two astronomical units, they shed themselves of the frozen them “coats” of gas and dust and gas form the tails. Then the dust enters the earth’s atmosphere, and eventually settles on the surface. ”

Thus the number of incoming cosmic dust to us must depend on the relative positions of the planets, explained the scientist. “After all, depending on their location changes the trajectory of comets and their number in the space between the Sun and the orbit of Mars, where the zodiacal dust cloud. Based on these considerations, a change in the concentration of cosmic dust and, therefore, the Earth’s climate must be periodic, similar to those observed in the arrangement of the planets, “- said Stozhkov.

To test these assumptions, the researchers compared the frequency of pairs of planets in the location and temporal periodicity of the Earth’s global climate change. It turned out that the global temperature data network of meteorological stations and a calculated scientists Space dust “traffic” virtually identical. The discrepancy is at most 1-3 per cent. Using the obtained regularities, scientists have made predictions of climate change over the next half century.

Work undertaken – not the first, claiming the periodicity of climate change and, accordingly, the incorrect predictions of global warming, experts say FIAN. One of the confirmations of the calculations of Russian scientists began a study of ice cores extracted from boreholes drilled above Lake Vostok in Antarctica. The longest core length of 3623 m allowed to conclude that changes in temperature over 420,000 years. During this time the Earth was at least four major temperature fluctuations in a big way at 8 degrees! So the upcoming cold spell can be considered gentle. In any case, a century ago, the planet was one degree colder than today. And it is for global climate very much, say meteorologists.”

Numerous advocacy groups have been clamoring for more than 20 years about the need to take action against climate change. Untold billions of dollars have been poured into this campaign with the goal to reach a global agreement similar to the Montreal protocol of banning ozone depleting gases, but as many are aware of the Copenhagen 2009 conference, this did not occur with carbon dioxide; namely fossil fuel CO2. In the United States, a national attempt at capping CO2 gases met a similar fate.

Policies of returning back to “normal” fossil fuel CO2 levels are typically at the 1990 level of emissions. It is never mentioned where we are with our “out of control” emissions, but we just are constantly warned that we need to give our government the okay to take over the “top-down” control of CO2 emissions. Currently, more and more citizens are questioning what could be a global policy that would cost trillions of dollars. Oddly enough, there is good reason for this lack of trust.

The kicker is that according to CDIAC, the magic number of 1990 fossil fuel emissions level is…

1330618 (thousands of metric tons)

At the end of 2011, the US should be close to 1300000 (thousands of metric tons) in emissions (linear extrapolation). All of this success without a global commitment or the EPA really clamping down with regulation. All that was needed was a world class recession and most manufacturing shipped to China and India.

In this “game”, it appears that you have pieces of “pie” to place on the “problem” to achieve a solution or “covering” of the problem. Let us say that there is a CAGW problem, you have 8 pieces of a 45 degree angle wedge of pie to cover over the problem (mitigate, avoid, piss-on, piss-off, who knows…). These are known as the “8-Strategies”. Okay, check.

Of these “8-Strategies”, there are the following options:

1. Renewables & Biostorage Wedges (Green; of course)

2. Efficiency & Conservation Wedges (Yellow)

3. Fossil-Fuel Based Wedges (Blue)

4. Nuclear Electricity Wedges (Red; of course)

5-8 … No prefabricated wedges… hmmm…

Keeping emissions flat will require cutting projected carbon output by about 8 billion tons per year by 2055

is the goal. Let us try to unravel this.

To make the problem more tractable, we divided the stabilization triangle into eight “wedges.” (Figure 4) A wedge represents a carbon-cutting strategy that has the potential to grow from zero today to avoiding 1 billion tons of carbon emissions per year by 2055, or one-eighth of the stabilization triangle. The wedges can represent ways of either making energy with no or reduced carbon emissions (like nuclear or wind-produced electricity), or storing carbon dioxide to prevent it from building up as rapidly in the atmosphere (either through underground storage or biostorage).

Okay, I shall not bore you with the silly linear slope of carbon production of fig. 4. If you are inclined to read it, feel free.

Back to the post. So, after the game pieces are cut, the *wedges* represent a billion tons a year that can be placed over the problem.

1. Renewables and Biostorage :

Wind-generated electricity

Solar electricity

Wind-generated hydrogen fuel

Biofuels Forest storage Soil storage

2. Efficiency & Conservation:

Increased transport efficiency

Reducing miles traveled

Increased building efficiency

Increased efficiency of electricity production

3. Fossil-Fuel-Based Strategies:

Fuel switching (coal to gas)

Fossil-based electricity with carbon capture & storage (CCS)

Coal synfuels with CCS Fossil-based hydrogen fuel with CCS

4. Nuclear Energy

Nuclear electricity

Wow. What an interesting teaching tool. Now, what I am understanding is that Joe Romm thinks that the Nuke wedge is not 1.00 but 1.77, which is a significant contribution from the “warmer” side of the CAGW debate. I would have to modify the Renewables and Efficiency/Conservations to reflect a 77% reduction/effectiveness and this game might take off 😉

Weather and climate change seems to fit with the human psyche very well. It is much to do with the cycle of life and people can relate positively or negatively depending on their disposition or enthusiasm. I personally enjoy the capricious nature of weather or climate and the stormier the storm, the more exciting it is.

This Northern Hemisphere winter, I like a good many people were interested in the decadal (plus a year or two) La Nina in conjunction with a low solar activity and how this might affect this particular weather/climate season. Some of the experts out there have projected for previous winters, some sort of warm sogginess that would represent a tropic monsoon. Judah Cohen working with MIT has worked out this forcast for the United States:

While I take exception to the vagueness of this “anomaly” measurement, this graph/depiction is actually a very well known behavior of a La Niña cycle. This is not extraordinary forecasting.

Currently, the weather for the West Coast is quite wet and cool, which is close on the forecast model. The curiosity is the layout of current conditions and conditions of December. As of now, we are looking at a pattern for the first two weeks of January 2011 that looks like this:

Unless March plans a late game come back, I am not seeing where this model is taking into consideration oceanic conditions that appears to

heavily influence the US weather patterns. Barrow Alaska seems to be enjoying temperatures 1 degree above freezing, but no other US region appears to be enjoying these toasty influxes.

An amusing 25-30% of the country appears to be enjoying a -4 degree anomaly of global climate disruption. This pattern is the same for most of Europe and Siberia as well.

As for the Precipitation Forecast, it is equal copy-and-paste of the La Niña tenancies, but is lacking in skill.

Here we have a typical forecast of a La Niña coming out of a El Niño. Again, there is no accounting for the rapid drop in the ocean conditions this fall bringing us to this decadal characteristic of weather.

The Southwest is still holding on to the “drought-like” conditions, but Florida may need an update. Snow-pack continues to build in California:

Finding anything that shows anything interesting in the skill of forecasting by Judah Cohen is something to be

In poker you can stay in the game even if you have lousy cards by continuing raising the bet.

As long as your bet is not called, you are in the game and have not lost.

In science this strategy is practiced a lot: If your theory cannot explain anything and is questioned because it is absurd and contradictory and does not fit with observations, raise the bet to an even more absurd and contradictory theory claiming that it might explain something, and so on….Some examples:

The number of homes found with unsafe insulation from the federal government’s bungled scheme will be kept secret because it would scare the public and ruin fraud investigations, the responsible bureaucrat has argued.

The government on Monday released an update on its progress to wind down the $2.45 billion home insulation scheme.

An auditor-general’s report last week found safety practices were overlooked in the Environment Department’s rush to roll it out.

Four deaths and hundreds of fires have been linked to the program, with more than 4000 cases of potential fraud identified.

It has left homeowners fearful of fire hazards in their roofs as well as “live” ceilings caused by foil insulation touching electric wires.

The government has either completed or arranged times to inspect about 55,000 non-foil installations and will finish inspecting foil insulation jobs by Christmas.

Climate Change Minister Greg Combet and his parliamentary secretary, Mark Dreyfus, said the CSIRO and an independent consultant would be commissioned to analyse the inspection data and publicly release the results.

But data on inspections to date won’t be released as it would be skewed, as they target work by businesses linked to the fires.

Climate Change Department deputy secretary Martin Bowles was forced to defend the decision in a senate estimates hearing on Monday.

Mr Bowles said data on the foil inspections was being provided to the department and he believed “the overwhelming majority” of work was problem-free.

Releasing the information could compromise future fraud inquiries, he argued.

“It can create apprehension in the broader community and it can further do damage to the industry if, in fact, inappropriately that kind of information is out in the public arena,” Mr Bowles said.

“If in fact they are fraudulent and I start to release the information out there … it scares the horses.”

Despite all the media über-hype about this year’s weather extremes, which are normal to begin with, and the upcoming Cancun Conference, German public interest in climate protection fell yet again during the 3rd quarter of 2010, from 56 to 55, according to the co2online GmbH, a program set up by the German Ministry for Energy.

The reason for the drop was due to the lack of interest by the media in reporting on climate change. The public is bored by the topic.

The Climate Barometer is published every quarter and is based on the evaluation of 4 indicators, which are converted to form the Climate Barometer index.

Experts complained about the continued wane in public interest. Thomas Hirschof the organisation: Bread for the World:

In the energy debate, climate protection is an issue that was very much overshadowed by the recent issue of nuclear power in Germany.